Review by provos 
Posted: 1.4 years ago
member for 2.6 years, 15 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
 Mountain View,Santa Clara,CA
 $149 per month
 about 7 days
 "static ip and reverse dns"
 "very unreliable and almost no customer support"
 "better find somebody else"
| Pre Sales Information:
Install process:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I have been using Etheric for about three years now. When I got the service initially, it was very good. Unfortunately, after a few months, high packet loss and high latency became the norm. Sometimes this was due to weather and equipment damage which was outside Etheric's direct control.
It took me a long time to discover that the initially installed equipment did not support link layer error correction and the higher the packet loss became, the more often data was corrupted during transfer. It essentially became impossible to download large tarballs of source code. My workaround was to download the tarball to another computer and then do repeated rsync over ssh until the data finally arrived on systems in my house.
Last year, Etheric installed their Gen3 equipment on our roof, without charging as a courtesy to make up for past problems, and promised that I would really like the improved quality. Things were fine for maybe three months but now 10% average packet loss is not unusual. The web servers I have been running over Etheric's link have become so unreliable for visitors that I had to move them to a co-location facility.
My frequent emails and phone calls to the support line remain unanswered for the most part. When I am able to solicit a reply, the promised fix or phone call usually does not happen.
So, although I had great hopes for Etheric, I cannot recommend them. I am still using them right now, but probably have no choice but to finally engage the telcos or cable companies for connectivity :-(
You can see smokeping snapshots for the first hop Etheric router attached.
Attached images and files
Followup comments:  aligzanduh
Premium
join:2003-02-04
Mountain View, CA
| Customer Experience Re: This customer. The G-3 system we have installed system wide - works quite well for the vast majority of our clients. Unfortunately this customer did not show up in our trouble alert system - because most of his tests were good.
The senior engineering "lives" in our radar system - the junior engineering handles individual residential link problems customers report.
Generally Senior Engineering allready knows about the issues customers contact us about when it comes to line quality - and usually there is a project in the works to correct it.
In this case the customers multiple emails did not result in his getting a ticket opened and resolved.
This is unconsciounable and we are flogging ourselves over this sloppiness.
Rest assurred that all customer link issues that come to us from the customer will be reviewed on at least a bi-weekly basis with senior engineering to ensure no-one's service suffers for more than a short period of time.
We have in fact put in our G 3.5 Network at Black Mountain - and elsewhere - and we immediately transferred this customer to the new 3.5 gen transmitter servicing SunyVale and Mountain View - we will credit his account and I hope he will post back confirming that all is well.
Sincerely
Alexander Hagen
CEO
Etheric Networks Inc | |
|  | provos
join:2006-01-04
Mountain View, CA
 ·Etheric Networks
| Re: Customer Experience This is an update on my situation.
Etheric switched me onto a different beam and since then all my network troubles have vanished. I waited for about one month to post an update. For the last 30 days, I had zero packet loss and very low latencies. So, right now, I am very happy with my network situation.
However, the support problem is really something that Etheric needs to get under control. Alexander told me that they are working on it. I guess I will find out the next time I need to get in touch with support.
At the moment, everything looks very good. | |
| | | aligzanduh
Premium
join:2003-02-04
Mountain View, CA
| Re: Customer Experience We have now doubled our support staff at Etheric. Every network has some nodes that are problematic. In our case - we have the power to correct these problems - as we maintain our own fully meshed redundant network. We are currently peering directly with AOL, Qwest, Level 3, Global Crosssing to name some of the key partners.
====================
We presently have a ratio of customer to tech support staff that is very aggressive. We have 1 engineer for every 50 customers. (5 full time and four part time technical support staff). This is about the right level for true 7 x 24 capability and response. In addition we have admin sales and R&D staff of an equiv amount.
Sincerely
Alexander Hagen
CEO
Etheric Networks | |
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